China is free to sell any bonds it holds, to anyone who will buy those bonds.

However, China can not force the United States to take back those bonds.

There is no “call” provisions on U.S. debt.

What’s Hillary’s next step? She going to cut off economic trade with China? If that doesn’t work, will she threaten war with China over Tibet?

Saber rattling?

They should, or least protest it. But after W.’s tenure, and fundamental contempt for human rights and international law, that would hardly be the only issue they’d have to cite.

China does not deserve our support. We need to get back on track on supporting human rights and denouncing violators.

Hey, a girl can dream. Spain, Portugal, Canada, South Africa, Netherlands, etc. The list of countries with a better record of human rights than the US.

And, China’s oppression of Tibet is not new. Did the world not know about it until now? China promised to do better before the games? WTF, why did they ever AWARD the games to China?

Having said all that, boycotting the opening ceremony is a lot different than boycotting the games. Boycott the ceremony but not the games.

And… as long as microsoft and yahoo and such cow-tow to China’s suppression of information, boycotting the olympics is a mighty hollow gesture.

Hell, we’d have to boycott the american telecom companies to be consistant… And bushco and the republicans in congress want to give them unlimited immunity forward and backward.

People who live in glass houses really shouldnt throw stones.

And what happened in Russia after a few years of relative freedom. Fascism and capitalism are natural bedfellows.

If the Beijing authorities have any issue with too much free speech, that will make the point well enough.

P.S. I don’t China will stop funding our government, any more than the U.S. will stop buying Chinese goods. At this point, either action would be like hitting the brakes at 70 mph, and doing one would inevitably provoke the other. It just ain’t happening!

Having said that, I think it’s long past time we stopped deliberately running our government on borrowed money, though that, too, will not happen overnight. :-(

Remember that our atheletes are targets and they deserve to compete in a country that we can fully trust everything will be done to protect them. We can’t trust China to do the right thing with anything.

I really don’t care whether Bush attends or not. More appropriate would be every athelete, after winning, making statements to the media about Tibet. Holding up signs during medal ceremonies. Let’s show China what a free society really looks like.

China may soon discover, as did Russia, that economic liberalism and political dictatorship are difficult bedfellows to hold together; the first inevitably, sooner or later, leads to the collapse of the second. Given China’s cultural history, it will likely be later rather than sooner, but it’s inevitable nonetheless. We can just nudge it along.

By “other tools” I suppose Randy means invading a country and then occupying it for 100 years as in Iraq.

Raping and killing Iraqi women and children is no different than what China does.